SMS Pro Aviation Safety Software Blog 4 Airlines & Airports

How to Set Up Classifications in Aviation SMS Programs

Classifications are the bread and butter of your SMS program’s safety data organization. Making safety decisions without well-constructed classification systems is like riding a bike with flat tires – you won’t get anywhere. In fact, one of the primary markers of a functional aviation SMS program (versus one that is a farce) is a well-organized set of classifications.

Yet as important as they are, we see aviation safety programs all over the globe struggle with building classification systems that:

Usually, classifications are organized into three levels, such as described above. Having more “levels” can easily become pedantic and unmanageable. Less levels tends to be vague and unhelpful in making decisions and establishing trends.

Organizing Classifications with Classification Tree

Classification trees, as described above, are perhaps the best organized into a classification tree. A “classification tree” allows you to expand and collapse each category and sub-category. This successfully condenses large amounts of information into a manageable format.

Compare this to something like a table. If you are looking at Hazard Classifications for example, you might have 200 or more classifications:

As a table, this information would be the equivalent of about 4 pages long with small print;

As a table, this information would also have much redundant text because every line item would include the name of the category and sub-category; but

As a classification tree, this information would be about 10 lines long (minimum) to 20 lines long (category fully extended), or about the equivalent of about half a page (small print); and

Moreover, classification tree has no redundant text.

However, having a classification tree means having a computer based product, such as aviation safety software or a similar product. Classification trees cannot be used in other mediums, such as Excel or Microsoft word based classification organizational systems.

How Specific Should Classifications Be?

One of the most important questions regarding risk classifications is: how specific should they be? Unfortunately, there’s no objective answer to this question. The best answer is that good classification trees are organized into three levels (category >> subcategories >> classifications) and are:

Not so specific that you need many, many classifications to capture the essential idea; but

Vague enough to be useful for capturing various, similar situations.

For example, good specificity of classifications looks like:

Flight Ops>>Wildlife>>Birdstrike;

Flight Related>>Wildlife>>Wildlife on runway; and

Flight Related>>Wildlife>>Rodent in aircraft.

You can see in the above examples that the classifications are specific enough to capture the essential piece of information, such as “animals” and “runway”, but not so specific that many classifications are needed to capture the basic idea.

Less effective use of classifications are listed below – and it’s probably the most common mistake (along with having classifications that are too vague) of using classifications in the aviation industry:

Flight Ops>>Wildlife>>Moose on runway;

Flight Related>>Wildlife>>Bear on runway;

Flight Related>>Wildlife>>Deer on runway;

Flight Related>>Wildlife>>Mouse in aircraft; and

Flight Related>>Wildlife>>Rat in aircraft.

You can see that the above classifications are less effective because you need so many more classifications to capture the same essential information. Information such as which “type” of animal is better suited for being establishedin the issue description of a safety report rather than the classification.

For more helpful information, see these hazard classifications list which you can use as a template and modify to meet the needs of your organization.